Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

The month passed quickly slow. I looked forward to seeing Isha again, wondering if we were friends or merely teacher and disciple.

Gloam and I made our way through the city as afternoon closed in towards evening. There were enough people on the street that we did not stand out. We dodged into in the alley leading to the shrine unobserved.

I stopped at the nook halfway down the narrow path to the shrine. Isha arrived almost on our heels.

“Hail, sister,” I called softly.

“Well met.” She ignored the proffered garment to embrace me with a firmness that answered my question. “It is well you bring the little one – let her learn too. Her age?”

Now she accepted her blouse back.

“Five. I hope to be offworld before she is old enough to watch the nights alone.” It was very easy to slip into Isha’s oddly formal speech patterns. “I long to be reunited with her father.”

“Tell me of him, what man would leave you to raise a maid alone and seek your comfort in the kiss of a blade?”

“Her father is of another world.” I didn’t mention that my daughter’s father was typically a female in that other world. “Twilight is great mage there, and the elect student of the god-queen Princess Celestia. We are separated because our union was not pleasing to Celestia, though in sooth I know not what our sin was. (I may have disrupted an important festival in conjunction with the Chaos Lord of that world.) Twilight has not neglected me of will.”

“I’m guessing you probably don’t mean a space voyage. With years of stink and coldsleep and tubes up your backside.”

“Neigh, ahem, nay.” I laughed at my slip “We are not human either. Were not, at Gloam’s incept date, I mean. Obviously at this moment—” I held up one hand as if to demonstrate my current humanity. “And the road there is magic, no spacecraft plies those wyrd stars.”

“So Gloam must be named after her father. Does he know what a lovely child she be?”

The lovely child was momentarily out of sight – probably shinning her way up the cromlech.

“Twilight probably doesn’t have a clue that she might exist. Celestia interrupted us mid-consummation of our wedlock.”

“Bitch goddess! Aphrodite treasures the coupling of her devotees if only they honor her. Will the child be troubled by ritual nudity?”

In reply I gestured at the trail of Gloamwear littering the path ahead of us, leading to the shrine.

“Natural born nudist. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Or right?” Isha suggested.

“Or right.” I agreed as I folded Gloam’s clothing and placed it neatly in one of the cubbies I had not noticed at the rear of the nook on my first visit. Folding my own clothes, I noted how Isha crammed her own into a cubby without a thought. She chuckled at my unease and pulled everything back out to fold it.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to be uptight.”

“It takes all kinds,” she said, “and I respect your discipline. Incidentally if you disrobe here, before stepping onto the grass, any synthetics and metals will be safe.”

“Thanks, that simplifies the logistics.”

—

I had hoped to dive directly into the brass tacks of sorcery. Instead, after prayers before Aphrodite we rather spent the evening on myth and philosophy; much stress was put on the importance of self control. I ached for knowledge that would let me use the power I knew lurked in the back recesses of my soul, in the hard bone of my hornbed. Someday I might gain the lore to cross between worlds by some route other than the Equestrian magic that had failed me.

By dawn I had learned more of patience than of presto but I was assured that my path was correct. I would learn much and in the process protect myself from such paroxysms of need as had sent me scrambling for a shrine to pray at. My studies of cryptoliterature had been rendered fruitless by the enforced separation of practitioner from researcher. At last I would be both. A small increase in practical knowledge would add exponential value to esoteric facts that had not benefited me before.

Somewhat mollified, I committed myself to a long, slow, path to power.

We dressed in the predawn and left together.

—

A nigh abandoned city seems doubly vacant in the early morning.

Like the call of a hunting beast, the howl of an engine echoed between the skyscrapers; it could be coming from any direction. We were halfway across the broad arterial street when the source of the noise became clear.

The speeder coming around the corner had to be doing at least two hundred clicks and gave no sign of slowing down for the pedestrian crossing. Rather it was aimed right at us and accelerating. Isha threw herself in front of Gloam. I drew myself up to my full height (such as it is), put my hands out in front of my body, and closed my eyes.

Gaia, I believe, give me faith.

The words flashed in my mind at the speed of thought.

The speeder’s turbine rose to a whining roar and then stopped. The only impact was a gust of hot, fume laden, wind and a slight Van Der Waals force on my palms. When I opened my eyes the speeder was stopped a molecule’s thickness from my touch.

“O goddess,” said Isha.

“Wow, mom!” shouted Gloam.

The speeder’s windows were coated with rich red on the inside, rapidly turning black. Slowly the dead vehicle began to roll silently away from us back down the gentle incline of the road. The chinking of armored windows beginning to crack, and hot metal pinging, were the only sounds to break the eerie silence.

“What. How. Explain.” Isha was flabbergasted.

“I didn’t meant to kill them, really! I canceled out the vehicle’s momentum by transferring the kinetic energy into the occupants of the vehicle as heat. But I messed something up; I thought I could see how everything fit together. Its probably going to explode as soon as any oxygen gets in from the windows breaking or the steel melting.”

She shook her head. “You made a math error and it affected reality?”

“Yeah, should have just freaked them out made them feel slightly flushed, instead of detonating them. It’s gonna light up the ObsSats like noon as soon as the heat reaches the vehicle skin. Let us become scarce before enforcers show up.”

“You can just blow them up!” Gloam was ready for a fight.

“Fie, daughter. We don’t seek out bloodshed. I just don’t hesitate if it is forced on me to protect my baby, my friend.” I glanced at Isha, who was looking faint. “Not to mention my own coat.”

—

“I thought you said you didn’t know much magic.”

Isha sat at my kitchen table, holding a steaming mug. Reinforced with a warm beverage and pastry, she was recovering from the shock of seeing serious magic deployed.

I dealt with the shock by keeping it compartmentalized, away from my active thoughts. I wanted to use my power – but not to kill.

Gloam had already scarpered off to her bed.

“Uh, that one mostly surprised me. I suppose that it could have ended up being worse than being killed on the road.”

“Perhaps you understand better the importance of my homilies on self control.”

“Yes, elder. But—”

Isha cut me off with a stern glance.

I bowed my head humbly. It was a challenge, this urge to hurry up and be patient.

“But, what?” she asked after a long pause.

“But if I had reacted any slower we’d be dead.”

“What if you had killed innocents with your mistake?”

“As long as I’m not being foolish, it’s the assailant’s fault.”

“Bit of a chaoist, are we?”

“Yes! Duress is the root of evil, and what greater duress is there than to take life away from a sapient being? The fundamental right of any mind bearing creature is self defense.”

“Tell me, if you had sent the speeder flying like the two at the shrine, what then? It could have punched a hole right into the side of an arcology and exterminated a family.”

“It didn’t happen.”

“Skill, or luck?”

“That much was skill. I was not being careless. The only ones who suffered—”

“They brought it upon themselves, I agree. They rolled the dice on our lives, and paid with their own. My concern is whether you put anyone else at risk.”

“Nope. More hot chocolate?”

“Nah, I’m beat. Can I crash here for a few hours?”

“Of course!”

When I stepped into my bedroom to grab a blanket for the sofa, she was on my heels. Yawning hugely, she undressed and slipped under the covers before I could say anything.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, eyes already half closed.

For a moment I hesitated, wondering if I should clarify my intent or simply occupy sofa myself.

She was out before I could reach a decision; instead I ended up stripping down and forgoing my usual sleepwear. Cautiously, I approached the other side of the bed and lay down.

I had already spent the entire night naked with this woman, but lying in bed with her nearby was so much different than sitting at her feet as she taught me. I’d never be able to sleep like this…

—

When I awoke the priestess of Aphrodite was gone. The message she left behind consisted of a single word: “Moondark.”